Religion and Freedom

English version of Religie en Vrijheid – Vier essays over Religie en de Open Samenleving. The English texts are somewhat condensed; the Dutch text remains the reference.

1. Religion, a Genealogical Inquiry

   God is back from (never) having been away. How Europeans learned to name the religions of others, and why our Western concept of religion has blind spots.

2. The Identity Crisis of the Christian Religion

   Luther, the Scripture principle and confessionalisation: how religion was reformatted into a set of beliefs and a marker of mutually exclusive identities.

3. Freedom and Religion, a Love-Hate Relationship

   From the Puritan exodus via Roger Williams and William Penn to the First Amendment and Tocqueville: the birth of religious freedom.

4. The Imperialism of the Religious Identity Marker

   How the religious identifier swallows other identities, how administration and law manufacture religions, and why expert, governed and lived religion must be told apart.

Afterword: Religion as a Cultural (F)actor – religion as part of the human survival kit, and the narrative power of biblical stories.

© Dick Wursten – fair use policy: all use permitted, provided the source is acknowledged.